Chapter 12 Flashcards
Tritone substitutions and mystery chords
The Gretty Chord Mystery -from Whitechapel to the World Wide Web John , Paul and George would no doubt have measured their progress as budding guitarists with the ritual passing of every new shape, with that now infamous trek across Liverpool in search of the B7 chord just one landmark in a wide-eyed quest for new sounds.
‘There’s a very jazzy chord in it - “Michelle ma belle”. That second chord. That was a chord we used twice in The Beatles: once to end George’s solo in “T ill There Was You” and again when I used it in this. It was a chord shown to us by Jim Gretty who worked behind the counter at Frank Hessey’s where we used to buy our instruments on the “never never” in Liverpool. So Jim Gretty showed us this one great ham-fisted jazz chord, bloody hell! George and I learned it off him .. .’
But if this is The Gretty Chord, then where is it in ‘Michelle’? The answer is the second chord of the verse, just as McCartney says.
The guitar chord on the Rubber Soul version is a Bb7#9 , which follows the verse’s opening F major chord , with the root of the Bb chord now up at the 6th fret of the guitar.
Appreciation of the chord is not aided by the rhythm guitar being so low in the mix, making the offending D natural easy to miss. But it can nevertheless be heard on close inspection, especially in the last verse after ‘ma belle’ and also in the dosing solo in the same progression. Once again don’t be put off by the resounding clash of false relations, with the Db now prominent as a target note in the guitar solo - that’s the whole point of the chord
If Paul was spot-on about the power of the Gretty chord, he wasn’t quite as accurate about the number of times it was used during The Beatles’ career. One doesn’t need to look too far to hear that distinctive dissonance being used very selectively in other songs by John , George - and Paul himself. Let’s hunt some of them down
However, when it comes to appreciating the same chord in ‘Till There Was You’, the picture is rather different. In stark contrast,
the Gretty chord here fulfils a most unusual function and one that we have yet to encounter in our theoretical framework.
Tritone or “ Flat Five” substitution
‘Till There ‘Was You’ - Common Tones in the Flat Five Substitute
As we delve into The Beatles’ repertoire of similar chromaticism we should remember that this type of semitone moving line is
usually a clue that a Tritone Sub is in operation.
The differences and similarities between verse and the bridge uses of Bb should now be apparent. In the former there is no
three - semitone voice- leading and it only partially thwarts the expected Cycle Of Fifths movement - unlike the II-bII -i of the bridge which drives a straight line through the cycle, with a root movement that returns to base ‘as the crow flies’. The ultimate resolution in both cases is a Phrygian cadence, as bII moves to the tonic. And yet bVI-bII-i can also be construed as a tritone sub for a V7 only now in the context of a ~ bVI - V7 -i resolution.
The D chord now not only brings a rocky bVII tinge to the key of E but expertly represents the required V chord of the G major bridge. Having done the hard work with this super -cool transition, the actual bridge harmony itself need be no great shakes , emerging as a simple I- IV -I- IV alternation (as ‘Penny Lane’ would do later). However, unlike ‘Penny Lane’ and many others, the return to the original key for the next verse is not through the obvious route of a V7 ‘connector’. It could so easily have been, of course, with that final C chord begging to be slid down to B for the simplest of bVI-V-I returns to E major. Try it, perhaps with a melody line that follows the roots of C and B - it works.
‘If I Fell ‘ (intro-to-verse transition)
His strategy unfolds according to plan on the second circuit, as he sets about tonicising that same D chord as a new I chord through that unfailing modulatory maneuver , a ii-V of the new target. The requisite Em? initially sounds grand and dramatic as we search for a tonal foothold, but we soon find one as the re- emergence - or rather ‘reincarnation’ - of D major explains the harmonic teasing.
This is spectacularly elaborate songwriting of which Cole Porter would have been proud . Yet, as ever, Lennon and McCartney
match each other stride for stride, and even this ultra-subtle sneak preview of a later key centre has an uncanny counterpart in a
McCartney song
Nevertheless, in the wonderful coda of ‘Tell Me Why’, The Beatles show us how to arrive at this chord as a genuine substitution, replacing a previously heard chord a tritone away and creating that semitone root drop.
The crucial harmony is of course the Bb chord played by the guitar , which deftly achieves a chromatic ‘ii -bII-I’ run comparable to the more famous Gretty-fied moment in ‘Till There Was You’. Most impressive is the way in which this Tritone-conceived device complements the bass run. For the Bb is an astute alternative to the obvious V7 chord that would have ‘stolen the thunder’ from the bass run , which itself will only reach the ‘5’ two beats later. But played together the combined sonority is Bb/F, basically a bII with the 5th in the bass. Not bad for those innocent Beatles of 1962 - but not good enough for Decca!
Meanwhile, for some ‘4- 3 -2- 1’ root movement as part of a formal song structure seek out recordings of McCartney’s renditions of ‘Don’t Let The Sun Catch You Crying’, a highly ambitious inclusion in Beatles live sets in 1960, the year that Ray Charles released
his version of this subtle blues standard
Here is the clearest example of an Interrupted cadence that we’ve encountered so far, with the expected V-I move completely thwarted.
What is a polychord?
As the Greek prefix suggests, a polychord is defined as harmony in which the sounds of more than one chord are combined.
Technically, a true polychord must therefore be able to be broken down into the basic elements of at least two constituent chords. Of course many extended chords can be re-ordered to imply the presence of more than one chord. Take C major 9th , which contains the notes C, E, G, B and D, and which therefore can be viewed as a combination of a C major triad (C-E- G) and a G major triad (G–B -D).
Our ears would never have questioned the Bm7 in a simple diatonic I-ii walk, without the deliciously offending E note within the
lower harmony. But rather than write Bm7-with-11th -in- the - bass , the slash chord, Bm7/E, tells us all we need to know while warning us in print to expect some whacky, fusion- esque harmony.
Slash Chords and Combination Cadences
In the same way that the D dim of ‘Because ‘ resolved to its tonic in a way that combined elements of both a Phrygian and Aeolian cadence , so The Beatles found a select batch of slash chords that also appear to act in two ways at once , blurring the lines between
the familiar cadences of Perfect, Plagal, Aeolian and Phrygian which we normally find operating individually
‘The Long And Winding Road’ - Cycle Of Fifths
But it’s a long time before we know for sure quite where we stand , as that first polychord soon questions the way we feel about any D tonality struggling to assert itself. For the two elements of the G/A chord soon emerge, with the A element leading us ‘Perfectly’ down a fifth, to that D base; while the G part moves Plagally, making this polychord effectively resolve to D major by means of a IV -I and V -I at the same time!
Losing the way: the deceptive A7 -Bm move (1.41)
What better musical representation of Martha’s adventures in pastures new?
In the first strain our brief sojourn to Dm introduced the ‘silly girl’ in the form of that tonally ambiguous Gm9. The same chord now prompts the retransition from the second section by neatly acting as a pivot common to both F major (if you accept this as a temporary tonality) and the parent key of Eb major to which we head for the solo.
If the name of the chord doesn’t appear quite the same as our earlier constructions it can be understood through the most basic of substitutions. Indeed many transcriptions notate the chord as an F/G on its way to C, and that is a perfectly practical way of looking
Anthology 3 out - take , suggesting that he was thinking of bass and up per harmony simultaneously.
